1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a display array and a driving method thereof, and more particularly to a pixel array and a driving method thereof.
2. Description of Related Art
In order to meet the requirements of high speed, high efficiency, light weight and compact size for modern appliances, all electronic parts have been enthusiastically developed towards miniaturization. All sorts of mobile electronic devices have become the mainstream, e.g., notebook computers, cell phones, electronic dictionaries, personal digital assistants (PDA), web pads, and tablet personal computers (PC). In order to satisfy the demand for miniaturized products, among image displays of mobile electronic devices, flat panel displays having superior characteristic such as good space utilization, high resolution, low power consumption and no radiation have been extensively applied nowadays.
Generally, a flat panel display is constituted by a display panel and a plurality of driver ICs. The display panel has a pixel array, and pixels in the pixel array are driven by corresponding scan lines and corresponding data lines. In order for flat panel displays to prevail in the market, manufacturers all fervently strive to reduce process costs. In recent years, a technology for reducing data drivers by half is proposed, which mainly modifies the layout on the pixel array to reduce the number of data drivers actually used.
FIG. 1 is a schematic view of a pixel array of a conventional flat panel display. Referring to FIG. 1, a pixel array 100 has a plurality of pixels R, G and B, scan lines 110 and data lines 120. Pixels R, G and B are arranged in array. Scan lines 110 and data lines 120 are respectively connected to the pixels R, G and B. Parts of pixels of two adjacent columns are connected to the same data line, as shown by a data line 120A in FIG. 1. As shown in FIG. 1, since the pixels of the two adjacent columns shared the same data line which transmits corresponding data signals, the number of the data lines can be reduced by half to reduce the number of data drivers as required under this framework.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,151,689, another pixel array structure is proposed, in which the layout of the pixel array is roughly similar to the pixel array 100 of FIG. 1, and the corresponding data signals are inputted to the pixels of the two columns through the same data line at different times so as to achieve the same purpose of reducing data/source drivers by half.